Weight Loss

Searching for sustainable weight loss and management? Consider the need for a holistic approach. Of course you need an appropriate diet and a reasonable exercise program, but you will also most likely need to address thoughts and emotions that may prevent you from eating well.

Diet for Weight Loss

Mainstream weight loss advice consists of "Eat less, exercise more." This simplistic plan ignores fundamental physiological facts.

You eat to satisfy your hunger drive which reflects the energy available to the cells. Restriction of caloric intake without attention to changing to a healthy carbohydrate intake generally reduces energy available to the cells which increases hunger, making it very difficult to stick to the food plan. 

Plant-based kielbasa, kale and potatoes.

Traditional Chinese medicine recommends a whole foods plant based diet for health promotion.  A whole foods plant based diet is composed of whole grains, beans, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds provides your body with a healthy carbohydrate and caloric intake.

Research shows that meat consumption promotes overweight and obesity.  People who restrict meat intake are generally leaner than meat-eaters.  Meat is much higher in fat and calories than most whole plant foods, which makes it difficult to maintain healthy levels of body fat when one regularly eats meat. 

Among Seventh-Day Adventists, all of whom have generally healthy lifestyles as prescribed by their faith, only those who are strict vegetarians have a mean body mass index (BMI) below 25, which is the cut-off for overweight. 

Plant based diets also have been found protective against overweight, obesity, and metabolic diseases in Chinese adults.

A 2017 review entitled "A plant-based diet for overweight and obesity prevention and treatment" reported:  "Both clinical trials and observational research indicate an advantage to adoption of PBDs for preventing overweight and obesity and promoting weight loss. PBDs may also confer higher levels of diet quality than are observed with other therapeutic diet approaches, with similar levels of adherence and acceptability. "

For more information about the health benefits of a plant-based diet, visit the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, and NutritionFacts.org. 

Exercise For Weight Loss

Exercise is greatly over-rated as a component of weight loss plans. To lose a pound of fat you have to expend 3500 calories more than you consume as food.

Aerobic exercise does not efficiently burn fat. Since the average person uses only about 100 calories to walk or run a mile, this means you have to walk or run 35 miles to burn one pound of fat. You can consume the 500 calories expended in a 5 mile run in about 15 minutes or less.

Studies show that when people use aerobic exercise in conjunction with caloric restriction in hopes of losing fat, they end up losing significant amounts of muscle, which lowers their metabolic rate, making it more difficult to stay lean.

To stay lean for life, you need to maintain the lean mass that you had in your teen years. Strength training provides the best method to regain and maintain lean mass throughout life. I recommend brief, high intensity strength training. This provides all the training you need in one 15-30 minute session performed only once weekly.

Acupuncture for Weight Loss

Why do you overeat, or eat the sweet foods that make you gain weight? In my experience, my students and patients report that they overeat or eat sweets to compensate for feelings of tension and stress.

Acupuncture helps people lose weight primarily by reducing stress and tension, which enables them to more easily adhere to a healthful diet. Reducing stress and tension also reduces the production of hormones that can suppress metabolism and increase storage of fat.

C.O.R.E. Counseling For Weight Loss

C.O.R.E. stands for Conscious, Own, Retrieve/Release, and Engage. A C.O.R.E. Counselor helps people become more conscious of their limiters (beliefs, psychic contracts, fears, etc.), own them, release those and retrieve powers lost, and engage those powers in realizing their dreams.

If you have difficulty realizing your dream of attaining a lean healthy body because you find yourself sabotaging your efforts over and over, then you will benefit from C.O.R.E. Counseling.

Tracy Minton offers C.O.R.E. Counseling, hypnotherapy, and related techniques to help you move into the life of your dreams.

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